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		<title>A bad day for my mother &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2016/08-August/17.xhtml&gt;</title>
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			<h1>A bad day for my mother</h1>
			<p>Day 00529: <time>Wednesday, 2016 August 17</time></p>
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<p>
	After sending messages back and forth with PayPal, I finally got them to understand my situation.
	It seems that at first, they thought that I needed to file a dispute or something and that I had made the purchase using a PayPal account, but that for some reason, I kept giving them an email address not associated with that account.
	Once they understood that there was no PayPal account (I&apos;d made a purchase as a guest), the dispute had already been filed and won (though the dispute was through eBay, not PayPal), and that PayPal had simply sent me an email in a language that I couldn&apos;t read, they were able to actually address the situation.
	They gave me a brief summery of the email, which basically just said that I&apos;d recieve the refund in three to five business days.
	Perfect.
	I figured that it was a letter confirming the refund, but I needed to be sure.
	It&apos;s dangerous to assume.
</p>
<p>
	On the way to the recycling center to return the <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> Wi-Fi dongle that doesn&apos;t work with the $10 <abbr title="United States Dollars">USD</abbr> laptop, my mother told me about a job that they had applied for, but that their former coworker Alyssa had gotten instead.
	My mother seems to think that they&apos;re more qualified than Alyssa, though I haven&apos;t seen either of the two work, so I can&apos;t be sure.
	After a bit, my mother also realized that they&apos;d somehow lost a day; they thought that today was Tuesday, but it&apos;s actually Wednesday, the day of a conference that they had wanted to attend.
	They accidentally missed it, which was no doubt frustrating.
</p>
<p>
	We returned the Wi-Fi dongle to the recycling center, where the the salesperson told us that a computer that old might not be compatible with Wi-Fi hardware and that the operating system would not be compatible with modern software.
	I suspected that the software might be an issue, but until we could test it, I wasn&apos;t going to rule it out.
	It seems though that we&apos;re going to give up trying to make this laptop wireless.
	While we were there this time, I took the opportunity to look for charging cords for my laptop.
	The salesperson reminded me that the power cord must not only fit in the power jack, but also have the correct electrical output strength.
	I&apos;d forgotten that laptop cords don&apos;t all have the same output.
	They didn&apos;t have any cords that were right for my laptop in stock, so I&apos;ll probably order a couple online once we are settled in a new home.
	My mother also wanted to know about the possibility of getting a Windows reinstall disk with the purchase of a Windows machine.
	The thing is, every time that they get a Windows machine from the recycling center, it eventually fails because it&apos;s Windows.
	The best way to fix the machine (aside from actually installing a working operating system on it) would be to completely reinstall Windows from scratch to reset to a default state.
	The recycling center won&apos;t supply such a disk though, so once a Windows machine from there has gotten borked, there&apos;s no fixing Windows.
	One must either buy a new copy, install a better operating system, or part with the machine.
</p>
<p>
	Later that day, my mother was paining a table in the house, despite knowing that paining in the house is a bad idea.
	They managed to spill the paint in their bedroom, mostly on a plastic mat, but also a little on the carpet.
	I helped clean it up, but my mother really isn&apos;t having a good day today.
</p>
<p>
	Vanessa is now again looking at the option of getting an inexpensive Android device to use with their proprietary pedometer instead of getting returning it to the store.
	I told them about the cheapest one that I know of, and we verified online that it is indeed compatible with the pedometer.
	I suppose that we&apos;ll go buy it when they have time to do so.
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